Beyond Animal Husbandry: The Role of Herders Among the Wayuu of Colombia

Abstract

The territory of the Wayuu indigenous people comprises a small, low mountain range surrounded by a large desert that extends from Colombia to Venezuela in the Guajira peninsula. In pre-Columbian times, Wayuu livelihoods relied mainly on fishing and hunting in the littoral zone. Following the Spanish conquest, in their fight to maintain their territorial integrity they turned to rearing cattle, goats, and sheep they captured from colonists. They maintained their struggle against colonisation post-independence. In Colombia they have only recently obtained political devolution through legal recognition of their indigenous territories. Their economy now relies on animal husbandry to combat food insecurity. Our ethnographic study of Wayuu pastoralism confirmed our hypothesis that rearing goats and sheep has become integral to maintaining their cultural traditions, and revealed that the role of both male and female herders has become instrumental in their rituals, and integral to maintaining their longstanding patterns of reciprocity.