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The vision of the territory of La Guajira as a biocultural environment, the knowledge that encompasses the dynamics existing between their land and its biological wealth, is immersed in the memory of the Wayuu, who have transmitted it from generation to generation. | EFE

The Wayuu people have demanded the recognition of their binationality, appealing to the legal and political link that unites them with Colombia and Venezuela, which should translate into a full guarantee of rights and citizenship in both countries.

The Wayuu people have demanded the recognition of their binationality, appealing to the legal and political link that unites them with Colombia and Venezuela, which should translate into a full guarantee of rights and citizenship in both countries.

What for Venezuela and Colombia is a border, for the Wayuu people is the space where they have always lived, a territory in which families and clans communicate and mobilize according to their geographical references, such as rainy seasons and the search for better plots for raising their animals. These two blog entries explain the importance of recognizing the binationality of the Wayuu people according to international law. In this first part, we focus on the conception of the territory according to the Wayuu cosmology. In the second entry, we will show why understanding the territory from the Wayuu’s thought is paramount to overcoming the humanitarian crisis suffered by these indigenous people.

 

Wayuu cosmopolitics

The vision of the territory of La Guajira as a biocultural environment, the knowledge that encompasses the dynamics existing between their land and its biological wealth, is immersed in the memory of the Wayuu, who have transmitted it from generation to generation. Thus, the division of the territory in border areas, such as the Colombian and Venezuelan, seems like an invisible division, except for billboards and location references that indicate which country a person is standing. If somebody appears before the Wayuu elders in their ranches in the Colombian department of La Guajira, they ask the question: “Do you come from Colombia? Are you from Venezuela?” as if the classification between Venezuelan or Colombian corresponded to the foreign identity that exists in La Guajira, where everyone identifies as Wayuu.

The connection of the Wayuu people with both territories resisted the modern constitution of the states and opposed the colonization and independence processes. It is in this scenario of historical and cultural continuity in which the binationality of the Wayuu people stands, but which has not been recognized by Venezuela or Colombia, causing a rupture in the ways of life of the Wayuu people and making it impossible for them to access social and economic rights. This situation has condemned them to neglect and historical poverty, aggravated in a context of a humanitarian emergency.

In recent times, the Wayuu have claimed recognition of their binationality, appealing to the legal and political bond that unites them with both States and should translate into a full guarantee of rights and citizenship in both countries.

However, this territorial link that integrates a myriad of traditional knowledge and biocultural rights has not been implemented in Venezuela or Colombia, although Law 43 of 1993 established the rules for acquiring, renouncing, losing, and recovering Colombian nationality. Importantly, this law recognized that transborder indigenous peoples have the right to Colombian nationality; nonetheless, there has been no regulatory development regarding how to implement that recognition in the real world.

 

The territory of the Great Wayuu Nation

To talk about the Wayúu territory, we have to refer to its oral lore, because only through their narrations do we actually get an idea of how these men and women perceive the world. After he created humankind, Maleiwa wanted to disperse it across the planet through the castes, but before, he assigned a name to each one so their lineages could be distinguished.

According to Weildler Guerra Curvelo, the naming of the castes fell on the characters of the fauna. At first, Maleiwa appointed Maako (the monkey) for this work, but he was disrespectful to the Wayuu families. So Maleiwa assigned the task to Utta, who, due to his prudent character, was the most suitable to take responsibility. The Bird Utta was the first mediator or «palabrero» of the Wayuu people: he possesses the gift of speech with which he developed practical rhetoric to resolve conflicts.

The Utta bird gathered the Wayúu couples and assigned them an animal as a totemic emblem of union and fraternity, in addition to telling the Wayuu woman that they would engender the natives of their caste through their offspring. It means there are around 30 castes, and according to their totemic qualities, the castes have their territories assigned. For example, in the wayuunaiki language, the Ipuana caste means those who live well on top of the stones.

This cultural context serves to understand why we must analyze the connection of the Wayuu with Colombia and Venezuela from its territorial conception that goes beyond the traditional definition of the border as the intersection and limit between the Nation States.

There is an important number of cross-border indigenous peoples between Colombia and Venezuela, including the Wayuu, Barí, Yukpa, Sáliva, Hitnu, Piaroa, Puinave, Sikuani, and U’wa. Despite dealing with indigenous peoples who have historically been discriminated against and vulnerable to poverty, states have not signed any international treaty that regulates the identity of binational indigenous peoples to guarantee access to their Human Rights.

Both countries only signed one Agreement concerning the regulation of plans, programs, and projects to improve living conditions specifically for the Wayuu people (Agreement for the Integral Development and Basic Assistance of the Wayuu Indigenous Populations of 1990). However, this instrument was declared unenforceable by the Colombian Constitutional Court in Ruling C-615 of 2009, given that the necessary prior consultation processes with the Wayuu people regarding laws approving international treaties were not carried out, a novel issue in Colombian constitutional jurisprudence.

However, in 2018, the Chancellery of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, in response to a right of a petition of a Wayúu citizen who required completing the requirements to acquire Colombian nationality, stated that the recognition of Colombian nationality by the adoption of peoples cross-border indigenous communities is conditional on the existence of a treaty with the State with which the territory shares. According to the Foreign Ministry, this interpretation responds to the application of the principle of reciprocity, and there is no public treaty that allows the implementation of this measure in favor of the Wayuu people.


Read the second part here

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