Discussions on ethnicity policies, cultural processes, and audiovisual appropriation in Amerindian communities in Colombia

Abstract

This paper aims to introduce some discussions on audiovisual processes of Amerindian communities in Colombia in light of the increasingly extensive Latin American repertoire in diverse political contexts. This is an ongoing research in which I have been using different methodological tools, such as ethnography, and other recent non-textual methods, such as photographic elicitation. First, I present how the politics of ethnicity in the region and, particularly, in Colombia, which are expressed through static and homogenizing concepts, have a limited scope for the plurality of indigenism experiences and, therefore, communities have been building cultural processes for the revitalization of their particular knowledge outside the space-time limits and to exercise their agencies here and now. In these cultural initiatives, audiovisual tools have been appropriated that were initially transferred through external actors and institutions, but which are now deployed in several interaction and negotiation scenarios. In Colombia, despite the fact that the audiovisual movement of indigenism oscillates between fissures and alliances, there is currently an influx of local experiences in which the camera plays a role in specific socio-cultural and political processes. Therefore, according to some advances in my research cases in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and in Bogotá, I conclude that audiovisual communication is rather a means for preserving cultural memory and to promote dialogues about the rural territory, as well as to establish new symbolic spaces for participation and inclusion in the city, respectively.