What is the place of the Andean Tradition today? To answer these questions, it is necessary to look at the historical development of the West with respect to its way of seeing cultures and itself.
The modern project, rooted in rationalism, began in medieval Europe, positioning itself as a discoverer and conqueror—first of its own culture and then of the “other” (Dussel, 1994). It pursued civilizing emancipation through control and violence. Indigenous peoples in America, Africa, and Oceania, among others, have experienced this process firsthand.
The Colonial Legacy in indigenous Knowledge and Religion
Colonizers succeeded not only through economic and material imposition but also by dominating knowledge and religion.
From their elevated position, they dismissed indigenous practices and knowledge as diabolical and inferior, considering them a lesser form of understanding (Depaz, 2015).
The efforts to understand, indigenous religions were marked by anthropologists such as Tylor (1871) who from the evolutionist perspective observed indigenous peoples as animists.
That is, as peoples in stages prior to a formal religion and a developed society, later it was tried to understand more animism as a religious respect to the living world (Chidister, 2018).
Be that as it may, taking indigenous peoples as animists contains colonizing dyes due to the legacy of Tylor.
Andean Wisdom: A Contrast to Divisive Thinking and Ecological Crisis
From this perspective the subject is separated from the object, there is a clear division between the human and its environment (Ricahrd,2017), traditional cultures do not recognize such division.
These ways of thinking have brought the ecological crisis, that humanity lives today, trying to control and domesticate reality without even knowing it (Zambrano mentioned in Piña Saura,2022 ).
The Andean people have expertly preserved and hidden their wisdom in the mountains, protecting it from destructive forces (Depaz, 2015).
This preservation is why some Andean logic endures today. Despite the absence of writing, myths, legends, and everyday speech hold this valuable knowledge (Emanuele and Edouard, 2023).
The Andean people value their strong relationship with both the earth and the cosmos. Favaron (2022), drawing inspiration from Peruvian writer Jose Maria Arguedas, emphasizes that humans must establish reciprocal relationships with other living beings.
Favaron explains that everything has voices and thought. He argues that the environmental crisis goes beyond being a quantifiable or technical issue; it stems from intellectual hardening and an impoverishment of human sensitivity, which blocks the ability to feel the voices and affections of other living beings.
Author: Joan De la colina Roman
References
- Dussel,Enrique(1994), El encubrimiento del otro: Hacia el origen del mito de la modernidad
- Depaz Toledo,Zenon(2015) La cosmo-vision andina en el manuscrito de Huarochiri
- Tylor, Edward (1871) Primitive culture
- Chidester David(2018), Religion : material dynamics
- Ternas, Richard.(2006) Cosmos y psique: indicios para una nueva visión del mundo .Atalanta
- Emanuele, F., y Edouard, M. (2023). Epistemologías andinas amazónicas.Concepto indígenas de conocimiento o, sabiduría y comprensión (P. Quintanilla & M. L. Clarke Barret, Eds.). Fondo editorial PUCP.
- Favaron Peyón, P. M. (2022). Poesía y territorio en José María Arguedas: La ecopoética andina de Los ríos profundos. La Palabra, 44, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.19053/01218530.n44.2022.14713
