Air currents, particles, rain and radiation connect the Yuma and Cauca rivers in Colombia to the Los Angeles River in California, to the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon and to the Yaqui River in the Sonoran Desert. Mamos, the spiritual leaders of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia, say that all bodies of water are connected. Science calls this the global hydrosphere, however science and academia generally maintain a critical distance from the subjects they study. Interesting to us is another way of generating knowledge which implies an intense personal involvement: the method of thinking with the body, of sentipensar: a pluriversal knowledge which contrasts with the true and universal knowledge that academia and patriarchy teaches us.
And when the body hurts, when the body is thirsty, hungry, expropriated, displaced, exiled, raped and mutilated with a chainsaw, it is impossible to not get involved. To involve yourself means to stop thinking of Nature as an object of scientific study or a simple object of aesthetic contemplation, as something external to us. To involve oneself is to understand that we form part of the biodiversity which is the womb in which human activity unfolds and where a relationship between the human and extra-human is created.
When, without being consulted, our home is declared to be in the public domain to make way for a megaproject, a gesture as simple as staying at home and looking after the garden becomes a gesture of opposition. When the stocks of fish in a river are seriously depleted by the building of a dam, to fish in a river where you can barely catch a few fish turns into a gesture of resistance. When armed policemen come to dispossess or displace us, then continuing to move and work in our territory turns into a gesture of rebellion.
It is not a gesture of obstinacy, it is a political gesture which clearly says that we are NOT in agreement with the way of life which is imposed on us. They are gestures which weave our connection with the land, rivers and forests and strengthen our wish to remain in our territory. To cast a fishing net, pan for gold, drive mules or grow crops reaffirm the river, the riverbanks, the forest and the canyons as public spaces which are collectively owned.
These ancestral arts and crafts or quotidian choreographies which are intrinsic to the geography we inhabit, and intimately related to a territory and/or ecosystem, are what we call a geo-choreography. A geo-choreography is a political act which reverses the use of a body, so that it becomes a tool to create a new script which marks a living image on the territory. A geo-choreography redraws and redefines our body and our ecosystems, producing an expansive movement of the body. To expand the body counteracts fear and the physical and psychological displacement produced by development and the conflicts created by developmental interests.
The fishing net and the gold pan are a link between the human and the extra-human. While a dam cuts the river into two parts and blocks its currents, the river freely flows through the holes in the net and the surface of the gold pan. In contrast, with the wall of a dam, which is impermeable, impassible and solid, the fishing net is a porous object, permeable, with a malleable and flexible structure. While a dam is built by multinational companies, corporate subjects, machines and slaves of capital, the fishing net and the gold pan are woven and carved by hand, one by one, by a person.
The Spanish word for a gold pan, batea, comes from the Arabic word —batihah— which means “a flat place”. It may also be that it derives from our indigenous ancestors. In our territories, the pans are carved from the wood of trees in the dry tropical forests, like the ceiba, orejero, samán or cedar. We mainly use it to sluice minerals out of the water of rivers, above all gold, but it is also used to knead arepas (maize patties), mix manioc flour or wash clothing.
Atarraya, the Spanish word for a fishing net, also comes from Arabic —atarráha— and means “to throw, toss or cast”. In Colombia it has different regional names: rayo, espe, red de pesca, manta, charrasco, chile or chilón. Weaving an atarraya is known as atar-una-raya, that is, to draw a picture with knots. It means constructing something with links. An atarraya contains the wisdom of its weaving and through the atarraya, the men and women who fish embody a knowledge of the cycles of the river, its flood tides and currents and the migrations of fish. In this sense, a fishing net may serve as a guide for a social network which is more horizontal, dynamic and equitable.
The job of weaving a fishing net by hand may take between ten to twenty days, depending on its size. It is woven with a needle made of guadua (a type of bamboo), which is also made by hand. The measurements are taken from the thickness of the fisherperson’s finger: two points, two fingers. The weights are leads forged from old car batteries. The lead is boiled in a metal pot and emptied through a funnel made of sausage tins into a cone made of school notebook paper, incrusted in a thick clay. A skewer is stuck into the middle of the cone after being covered in grease. When the lead drains into the cone, it begins to curdle with the coldness of the clay. A copper covered weight is always placed in the fishing net. The fishermen use this copper weight to avoid “catching” bad energies that want to drown them. The copper frightens the bad spirits away.
The mule, garden, fishing net and gold pan amount to the alimentary, energetic, hydric and thus, economic sovereignties of our rural communities. To weave and cast the net, or wash out gold in the pan, is the reflection of an ancestral knowledge accumulated over centuries, which is not learnt in classrooms or books like this one, but is transmitted from one generation to the next, from grandmothers to mothers to daughters and granddaughters. This transmission of bodies of knowledge is linked to a muscle memory or muscle heritage and these muscle heritages have to do with the way in which we practice our callings. They vary from family to family. For example, some people hold the fishing net with their mouth, others place it on their shoulders or forearm. Some people shake and move the gold pan at a specific speed, others do it while they are sitting and others still, while they squat on the banks of a river. But bodies are being slowly drained of these autonomous and emancipatory ancestral gestures, in the same fashion that minerals and petroleum are drained from the earth by extractive economies.
