holderlin and the u'wa

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IDB CULTURAL CENTER July 2004 No. 51

Hlderlin and the Uwa:A Reflection on Nature,Culture and Development

Lecture by

William Ospina

ENCUENTROS


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IDB CULTURAL CENTER

General Coordinator and Curator: Flix AngelAssistant General Coordinator: Soledad GuerraConcerts and Lectures Coordinator: Anne VenaCultural Development Coordinator: Elba Agusti

IDB Art Collection Managing andConservation Assistant: Susannah Rodee and Florencia Sader

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The IDB Cultural Center was created in 1992 by Enrique V. Iglesias, President of the

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The Center has two primary objectives: 1) tocontribute to social development by administering a grants program that sponsors and co-finances small-scale cultural projects that will have a positive social impact in the region,and 2) to promote a better image of the IDB member countries, with emphasis on LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, through culture and increased understanding between theregion and the rest of the world, particularly the United States.

Cultural programs at headquarters feature new as well as established talent from the re-

gion. Recognition granted by Washington, D.C. audiences and press often helps propelthe careers of new artists. The Center also sponsors lectures on Latin American and Ca-ribbean history and culture, and supports cultural undertakings in the Washington, D.C.area for the local Latin American and Caribbean communities, such as Spanish-languagetheater, film festivals, and other events.

The IDB Cultural Center Exhibitions and the Concerts and Lectures Series stimulate dialogue

and a greater knowledge of the culture of the Americas. The Cultural Development Programfunds projects in the fields of youth cultural development, institutional support, restora-tion and conservation of cultural patrimony, and the preservation of cultural traditions.TheIDB Art Collection, gathered over several decades, is managed by the Cultural Centerand reflects the relevance and importance the Bank has achieved after four decades as theleadingfinancial institution concerned with the development of Latin America and theCaribbean.

Inter-American Development Bank and William Ospina. All rights reserved.


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HLDERLIN AND THE UWA:A REFLECTION ON NATURE,

CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT

William Ospina

Chasing the Dream of Cinnamon

462 years ago, Spanish conquistador Gon-

zalo Pizarro invested the wealth obtainedfrom plundering Cuzco into outfitting ahuge and crazed expedition, to find theLand of Cinnamon. Natives in the moun-tains had told him that heading eastwardbeyond the snow-capped peaks of Quitolay a vast land of cinnamon trees. Since

at that time, cinnamon was as coveted asgold, Pizarro did not hesitate to go chas-ing after this wealth. 240 Spaniards, 4000Indians, 2000 llamas loaded down withweapons and tools, 2000 hunting dogs,and 2000 pigs went up the arid slope ofthe mountain, skirting snowy peaks (wheremany Indians met their death) and even-tually reached the other side of the rangewhere vegetation is exuberant, and wherethe waters of streams and torrents join toform ever wider rivers which, after manydays of running, become the infinite Ama-zon.

When they finally reached the regionthe Indians spoke of, they did find the cin-namon which they indeed used to flavor

their beverages, but they discovered that itwas a variety of American cinnamon, verydifferent from the luxurious bark from Asia,and that it was so scattered in the forestsof the region that it could not be commer-cially exploited. At that time the adventur-ers were yearning to find forests of a single

species as in Europe. But many people arestill unaware, even five centuries later, thatin these areas the fruitfulness of the earthis inseparable from its diversity: in everysquare meter there are many different spe-cies, and any extensive cultivation soonexhausts the soil. The expedition resultedin failure, and when Pizarro saw his invest-ment lost, in his criminal madness he hadhalf of the Indians turned over to the vora-cious hunger of the dogs; many of thoseremaining he burned alive along with theuseless cinnamon trees. Today we knowthat the Amazon jungle is the greatest trea-

________________________________________________________________________________The lectureHlderlin and the Uwa: A Reflection on Nature, Culture and Developmentwas delivered at the In-ter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C., on July 29, 2004, as part of the IDB CulturalCenter Lectures Program.


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sure on earth, but those soldiers of fortune,

who eventually reached the mouth of theAmazon, were only searching for treasuresthat could be quickly seized and exploited.Hence, although one of the consequencesfor the Europeans of this 1542 expeditionwas the discovery of the Amazon River, allthey took away from that trip was the bittersense of failure and cruelty.

A Dazzling ... But Mistaken View

The men of the conquest seemed to bemaking an effort not to find anything thatwas radically new in the Americas: theywanted to find the obsessions of the world

from which they came. The Americas werefirst a dream and only then a hemisphere,and many of the fables nourished by Eu-rope for centuries converged in this dream.Columbus sailed along the coast of Vene-zuela, past the mouth of the Orinoco, andinto the Gulf of Paria, certain that he was

seeing the shores of Asia. The voyagerssaw what they expected to see: sirens andgiants, Indians and Amazons. If it is true,as the philosopher said, that we only see inthings what we put into them, the discov-ery of America is a perfect example of howmemory and hope often do not let us seewhat is right in front of us. This attitudebecame habitual, because for centuries ourAmericas continued to be interpreted inthe light of how Europe thought of them.Thus, just as they searched for the fountainof eternal youth in Florida, the city of em-eralds in Colombia, and the land of cin-namon in the Amazon, so they searched

for the city of gold that would put an end

to the sleepless nights of alchemists. The

legend of Eldorado gave birth to many ex-peditions for hundreds of years; the nichein the apse of Catholic churches became agilded Dorado until it finally settled as afable in the pages of Voltaires Candide.

It is strange to seek in one region of theworld what only exists in another, but it isalso difficult and strange to put names ona region with a language that came from avery distant world. At least in North Ame-rica, the United States resembles Europe inits climate system, and in much of its faunaand flora. The difference between Spainand the equatorial regions is of coursemuch greater, so when Spanish reached our

shores as a language already so mature thatit was on the brink of being standardizedinDon Quixote, there was always a linguisticgap between our reality and their terminol-ogy. Spanish did not have words for nam-ing what was specifically Latin American:the trees, birds, climates, native peoples,

their customs, their clothes and their my-thologies. The conviction that theirs wasa superior language made it difficult topronounce the indigenous names for fruits,animals, objects and persons.

The Poet of Excessiveness

Not long ago, I wrote a book, Las aurorasde sangre [Bloody Dawns], about Juan deCastellanos, the first poet to write in Spa-nish from the Caribbean, Colombia, andVenezuela. My aim was to show how this16th century man, who wrote the longestand one of the most original poems in the

world, suffered trying to translate the exces-


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sive reality of the tropics; he was not recog-

nized as a poet by scholars and critics inEurope because he dared to see what reallyexisted in the Americas, and he used wordsfrom the indigenous languages of the Ca-ribbean and the Andes to name whateverdid not already have a name in Spanish.The rules for writing poetry at that timewere very rigid: reality was symmetricallydivided into the poetic and the prosaic, apantheon of Greek gods acted out a richcollection of metaphors, and a catalogueof tropes were obligatory. That all meantthat a poet who wanted to illustrate the rawrealism and strangeness of the new landsfound his work rejected. Even in the 19th

century, the most important Spanish cri-tic, Marcelino Menndez Pelayo, declaredthat the work of Juan de Castellanos wasnot poetry because the poet had filled hisverses with barbaric and exotic words thatspoiled the classic sonority of the language,and hence he had given birth to a monster

unparalleled in any literature. The wordsthat the critic found barbaric were thenames of the natives of the Americas whohad lost their lives to Spanish lances, andterms such as hamaca, bohio, iguana, canoa,hurac and tiburn.*

This phenomenon in the field of litera-ture was paralleled in the other realms of

reality. Europe saw in our America what itwanted to see and stubbornly refused to seewhat was different from its expectations.Once it was established that the Americaswere in fact a new hemisphere, the Catho-

lic Sovereigns wanted our soils to be quick-

ly planted with vineyards and cypressesso that the landscape would no longerbe barbarian, and so that the symmetriesand harmonies of European landscapeswould grace the newfound lands with theirbeauty. Many European scholars spreadthe theory that nature was rustic and de-generate in the Americas and they thoughtthe same of the peoples of the Americasas well. Buffon asserted that not only wasnature smaller in size than in Europe, butthat upon reaching the Americas, Europe-an goods were somehow weakened. It wasleft to Alexander von Humboldt to come inthe early 19th century and suggest to Hegel

and to all those who superstitiously held onto the superiority of Europe to come test forthemselves the weakness of the great cro-codiles of the Magdalena River. But evenin the 20th century there were professors inColombia who spoke of the need to importwhite Europeans to improve the race. That

posture spread throughout the hemisphere,and indeed may still exist today.Of course from the beginning there

were great spirits, such as Juan de Castel-lanos, Bartolom de las Casas, or Vasco deQuiroga, who valued the Americas, its peo-ple and its nature for what they really were.Many chroniclers, starting with Gonzalo

Fernndez de Oviedo, looked at the Ame-ricas and forced the language to describe it.Many researchers such as the scholar JosCelestino Mutis, the director in Colombiaof that marvelous adventure both scientificand esthetic, which was the Botanical Ex-pedition, strove to recognize the singula-

rity of nature and to share this knowledge

________________________* hammock, palm-roofed hut, iguana, canoe,hurricane, shark


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with the world. But the official attitude, as

Germn Arciniegas aptly put it, was not somuch to discover but to cover the world ofthe Americas with all the illustrious cloth-ing of European civilization, and therebycivilize its landscape, customs, and peoples.One would think that that was only the at-titude of our colonial era, but the truth isthat even after political independence wasformally declared in the full flush of enthu-siasm for a republic, this custom persistedin our countries. The idea that Europe wassuperior not only in its culture but even inits humanity and in its nature remained themain obstacle keeping us from really see-ing the world to which we belong, and from

learning to discover its riches and to projectits potentialities for the sake of our com-munity and our own equilibrium.

A Romantic Naturalist

Behind the search for cinnamon and other

spices, the colonization of the Americassignified the beginning of the large-scalecolonization of the world by the great pow-ers of Europe. That phenomenon fortu-nately seems to have ended because, asFelipe Gonzlez recently said in Bogot,after the first decades of the 20th centuryno new territories were left to conquer. It is

very well known that one of the causes ofcolonialism was the exhaustion of naturalresources in the countries that had takenthe route of the Industrial Revolution. Ex-cept for an occasional artist like Gauguinor Stevenson, or an intellectual, no Eu-ropean seemed willing to go live in Latin

America, Asia, or Africa unless there were

major economic prospects for raw mate-

rials and precious goods.Nevertheless, while the greed of Eu-rope was plundering new resources, Euro-pean intelligence and sensitivity began todiscover other things in the world; that iswhy it is important to know about Hum-boldt. This German naturalists journeythrough the lands of the Americas can betraced on almost any detailed map becausethe grateful peoples he met named bays,plains, mountains, lakes, species of nativeflora, and even an ocean current in the Pa-cific after him. Not only did he make vastterritories and huge resources known to sci-ence, but this enlightened German scholar

helped construct modern geography. In hisbook Cosmos, he lay the foundations for anew sensitivity to nature, he began to de-velop the theory that our planet is a kind ofliving organism where everything dependson everything else.

Humboldt was a romantic hero, like

Byron and Bolivar, but whereas the lattertwo drew inspiration primarily from thestruggle for freedom and the idea of the re-public, Humboldt, a child of both Goetheand Rousseau, sought deeper answersto the enigmas of the world in nature, somuch so that he left this declaration offaith: The traveler who goes around the

world, like the historian who goes back overthe course of the centuries, has before himthe same discouraging picture of the con-flicts of the human species. That is why,witnessing the ongoing discord betweenpeoples, anyone who aspires to the serenedelights of the spirit revels in contempla-

ting the peaceful life of plants, and in those


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mysterious sources the regenerating power

of nature; or indeed, abandoning himselfto this innate instinct in his heart, possessedby a sacred intuition, raises his eyes to thefirmament where the stars eternally revolvein unchanging harmony.

Thus at the end of the 18th century, ageneration of European writers and art-ists profoundly influenced by the Enligh-tenment, began to argue for the need of anew kind of relationship with nature, onethat would relinquish the obsession forgain and take into account the wealth ofmeanings that nature holds for us, as pro- vider of well-being and at the same timeas object of reflection, source of serenity

and beauty for contemplation and grati-tude, and even as sacred object. The chil-dren of Kant and Rousseau warned thatthe unquestioned virtues of the industrial,scientific, and technological society, whichwas beginning to wrest marvelous disco-veries from the natural universe, were cau-

sing an extraordinary transformation ofthe world; what was showing itself to befull of promises of well-being and happi-ness for people, was also full of threats anddangers. Today these threats and dangersare no longer intuitions in the minds of afew sensitive and inspired souls, but ratherthey are overwhelming certainties projec-

ting their shadow over vegetation, over thehealth of water sources, and over the cli-mactic equilibrium of the planet.

Hlderlin: A New Mythology

Perhaps no work is so noteworthy in these

terms as that of Friedrich Hlderlin, a fel-

low student of Hegel and Schelling who,

at the dawn of the 19th century, tried topropose a new mythology for mankindwhich, by combining reason and inspira-tion, would protect us from the clouds ho-vering over civilization. One could say thatHlderlins poetry was not intended for hiscontemporaries. What it expressed hadto sound strange and incomprehensible tothe minds of many because Hlderlin wasseeing what was hinted at on the horizon,with the triumph of rationalism and tech-nology, and by the vanity of man marvelingat his own achievements and merits. Heonly had to look at the society of that timeto see where the world was going: because

of its singular talent for learning certainlaws, dominating certain techniques andinventing certain machines, a conceitedand tragic humankind would believe itselfto be the master of the world, authorizedto pillage and plunder; it would make itsown comfort the ultimate end of history;

it would tend to lose respect for the myste-rious and the unknown, lose the memoryof its origins, and abandon all sense of thesacred and divine.

Hlderlin warned of how by exaltingourselves as the enemy of other species, hu-man beings were apt to become profanersof nature, and a danger to themselves and

their descendants. He seemed to anticipatewhat Pablo Neruda wrote in a devastatingline: The earth made man its own pun-ishment. All those things were alreadywritten in the heart of civilization and inthe signs of the times, but no one else readthem so perceptively nor revealed them in

a way that was so refined and so beautiful.


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When Hlderlin began to transmit it all

in the pure language of clairvoyance andsong, his music found no echo in the soulsof his contemporaries, to the point wherenot even his closest friends perceived thedepth of his warning and outcry. The po-ems of Hlderlin, virtually without equal,in my opinion, and more than any otherpoet in recent centuries in the West, aremade to recover a sense of dwelling in theworld, which our age has been increasinglylosing, and to respond to this danger thatadvances upon civilization, that usurps theplace of civilization, and that is turning hu-mans into strangers in our own world.

But how could someone whose only

tools are words reach this good that ismore powerful and more dangerous thanweapons and wealth? Stronger thanthe strong is he who understands themwrote Hlderlin about his work. Aroundhim were strong and powerful beings; hewas timid and frail, he felt impure, almost

unworthy of the gifts of water and music.But countless strong and powerful beingshave been buried under the moss of time,while Hlderlin, who is now ascending tothe heights of history, and who each day isgaining a place in the heart of the living, isjust beginning to sing.

I would say that Hlderlin did not write

for the people of the 19th century. Rather,he seems to have written more for us, thepeople of the early 21st century, becausehis words have just begun to become com-prehensible to us. What he warned in hissongs is now not simply a hint, like cloudson the horizon of our age, but rather

every day is becoming more and more at

the heart and center of history. Slowly

and gradually the old gods withdrew theirgaze from us; slowly and powerfully theChristian god, the last sign of divinity inthe West, has become increasingly blurryin the crisis of values and eruption of un-controllable chaos of history. We could saythat humankind is now alone in a worlddespoiled of its sacred character. Todayanyone can easily perceive that our forestsare not those of legend and memory, butmerely natural resources viewed and plun-dered for greed; that rivers long ago ceasedbeing a mirror of time, an image of des-tiny, and the evocation of pure fountains,and instead are now means of transport

and energy resources. For many any dif-ference between the divine and the humanhas been erased, and the world is irremedi-ably being transformed into a warehouseoperated by some inscrutable beings whofeel that they have been self-appointed todecide on matters of life and death, on the

destiny of species, and on nature itself andthe future.

The Wounds of Human Folly

We are constantly disquieted by the possi-bility that human folly may have harmedthe divine principles of the world. During

the age of imperial Rome, Propertius wrotein one of his elegies: Our battles have notwounded any deity. That verse suggeststhat we human beings can experience atragic destiny of rivalry and conflicts, ofstrivings and profanities; that suffering andkilling is sadly customary in human beings,

but that something else, something much


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darker and more serious is at play, in that

our battles can alter the very foundationsof the world, by inflicting a wound that canindeed lead us to disaster.

We would not even know how to put aname on such crimes, but the gravitationalpull of such dangers is felt throughout allof Hlderlins work. It can be said that allhis poetry is a constant reminder that theworld and time are our kingdom, but alsoour responsibility; that things and symbolshave been entrusted into our hands; thatwe have been given language, the mostdangerous of gifts, as well as memorywhich is the mother of the arts, and the giftof sensing, of being moved, and of feeling

compassion. And that by disdaining thesegifts, upon which the meaning of our ad-venture, a true dwelling on Earth, is built,humankind has become so enamored withits own merits, that its convinced that it washumans who in fact performed the miracleof creation, invented water and color, fire

and love, mountains and storms.The merits, the conquests, the abili-ties of human beings are endless; countlesstheir factories and their machines; admira-ble their sciences and their techniques. Butwhat is most human about our species isremembering and being moved, it is lovingand naming, it is imagining and creating,

it is warmth and gratitude, the multiformpoetry that perceives the beautiful and theterrible, the sacred and the divine of theworld, and converts it, as Borges has writ-ten, into a music, a murmur, and a sym-bol. Hence when Hlderlin wrote theseverses: Full of merits is man, but it is not

by them, but by poetry, that he makes this

land his dwelling, he was also warning

us against the danger that this worship ofmodern humankind for its own sake mightmake us forget the more elemental giftsthat we have received, might make us for-get that we will only be able to flourish asa species if we admit that our life is subjectto another kingdom, if we do not attemptto exalt ourselves as absolute arbiters andmasters of the world.

Others translate those same verses thus:Full of merits, but man dwells poetically.And the meaning is the same: although theyare our merits, we cannot build our dwell-ing by reason and by technique alone, thatis to say, by knowledge, by dominating and

transforming the world, because human-kind must inhabit it respectfully; inhabit itin gratitude and wonder, with the ability tobe moved emotionally and the willingnessto celebrate what exists. Bottled water isa merit, but water is a gift. We are full ofmerits, of miraculous inventions; however,

to state it fully, while the human species cansurvive without electronic wonders, it can-not survive without water; it can survivewithout airplanes, but it cannot survivewithout breathable air. Hence, as great asour merits may be, our greatest responsi-bility is the world that we have received,the complex and inexplicable reality that

we are incapable of manufacturing. Andours is the age in which industry sings onlyto what humans create and transform, butat the same time disrespects and degradesall that we have received: water and air, fo-rests and feelings. The sea is subject to an-other kingdom, wrote the great American

poet John Peale Bishop. And at the end of


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his life, Hlderlin sang that creatures only

persist in what they are and reach their full-ness because they take refuge in the powerson which they depend: The flower is alsobeautiful because it flourishes under thesun.

New Cardinal Sins: War, Pollution,and Consumerism

Many have warned that the pathetic self-ishness of our Western culture, and espe-cially of what is now expressively calledthe consumer society, is a danger to theworld. Aldous Huxley said it with alarm inhis lectures in Santa Barbara a half-century

ago. The same has been done eloquentlyby writers from D. H. Lawrence in his bookApocalypse, and Ernesto Sabato in his talkson the technological society, to FrederickPohl and Isaac Asimov, in their marvel-ous book Our Angry Earth. A horrible tradein loneliness and death is on the rise, but

even the will to survive is weakening in thehearts and flesh of men. In a good portionof the world the evils that no one foresawtwo centuries ago are now so obvious thatHlderlins verses are becoming crystal-clear. In the early 19th century, Goetheand Schiller were unable to understand themeaning of these verses that today any of

us can appreciate and delight in, when hetold us that the gods, the great powers thatnourish the world:

cannot feel anything by themselves,and so (if I may speak) someone elsemust suffer and be moved on behalf

of the gods,

and to this being to whom they

cry out.But he who would pretend to be equalto the gods,

and to abolish all differences towardthem,

this is the arrogant blind one whomtheir laws condemn

to become the destroyer of his owndwelling,

to be the enemy of his own deepestlove

and to cast parents and children intosepulchers of ruins.

In this world besieged by pollution, bythe business of war, and by the throw-

away culture, we would indeed be hardput to find a more precise definition ofcontemporary humankind.

The Uwa and theWisdom of Eagles

It is more than intriguing that these reflec-

tions of the most refined of European in-telligence and sensitivity should coincidewith the attitude toward nature of theindigenous peoples of many places in theAmericas. In 1983, the British anthro-pologist Ann Osborn heard people in theUwa community in the Sierra Nevada del

Cocuy, in Colombia, recite the myth of theflight of tijeretas, migratory eagle-like birds.She noted that the mere reciting of somewords in a one-chord rhythm gradually in-duced the community into a kind of ecstasy.Shishara, Shakira, Karowa, Thakuma, Bekana,Raiayna, Oruna, Beragdrira, Ththumbria, Yo-

kumbria, Akatra, Barima, Ithkwitra, Okitra, She-


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rina, Botruna, Bukwarina, Barawiya, Sherowiya,

Waiyana She wanted to know what thosewords meant, and she discovered that theywere specific places. She wanted to knowwhether this sequence corresponded to aroute traced over the land, and upon visit-ing those sites she found fields strewn withold stelae. The long list was indeed a routeover the boundaries of the ancestral landof the Uwa, and the myth constituted akind of detailed map of hills, streams, for-ests, cliffs, and valleys. But this geographi-cal finding was not enough to explain thecommunitys emotion in the presence ofthe reciter. Then the natives told her thatthis route was the same as that made each

year by the tijeretas. Every year these migra-tory birds, whose scientific name isElanoi-des forficatus, fl y from the southern UnitedStates to northern Argentina, and whenthey pass over the Uwa territory they comedown and fly around it, following preciselythe route detailed in the myth. The natives

believe that their distant ancestors arrivedwith the eagles from the north and receivedfrom them the sacred land that they nowinhabit. They feel that they belong to theland: they are children of the eagles andof the trees; they have myths for their fo-rests, their birds, their rivers and their fish-es, and also for the other creatures populat-

ing their region. Their poetry displays ahigh degree of verbal refinement, a poeticcivilization rooted in the physical world,not lost or exalted in abstractions. Theyhave minutely surveyed and named theirterritory, with names that are not mereclues for maintaining their bearings, but

that represent a consecration and a bond.

They have made language an instrument

for establishing order and sanctifying theirworld. That was just what Hlderlin andNovalis both misunderstood and for-lorndemanded from poetry.

Fidelity to Origins

In Germany a great deal has been said ofthe originality of Hlderlins voice. Let ussay that in Hlderlin, originality consists offidelity to origins, that is, not to the newest,but to the oldest, the timeless, and perhapsthe eternal. That purity of his voice is likethe purity of a spring; it enables us to as-sume that his song springs from a crystalline

source. Perhaps Hlderlin sees the world inits original purity; that is why he can warnmore easily than any other that somethingis perverting this purity and write: Whatrises from a pure spring is a mystery. Andnot even a song can reveal it.

I think Hlderlin saw the world as the

people of antiquity saw it. This is commonamong native peoples everywhere, whohave not enrolled in the order of West-ern civilization; but it is quite unusual ina young 18th century German. Born in1770, in the midst of the century of ratio-nalism, when he was a child he perceivedthe sacredness of the world, its power to

cause joy and dread. What was it that en-abled Hlderlin to safeguard this treasureof his childhood and reach adulthood with-out having lost the capacity to perceive andvalue the purity of the world? In one poemhe says of himself that he was not educatedby classroom instruction but by the rustling

of the forest; that he understood the wa-


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ters and the winds, but that by contrast,

he never understood the words of humanbeings. He learned to appreciate gifts be-fore merits, and he felt that it was better forpeople to be faithful to a destiny suggestedby nature than to choose a direction out ofarrogance and knowledge.

Early on, he felt that the primary hu-man duty is gratitude, because it entailsbeing subject to the powers that provideand sustain. In one of his poems he tellsus that before his mother took him in herarms and nourished him at her breast, theair was already softly surrounding him, andin particular, there poured a heavenly wine,a sacred breath, in his heart being born.

Thus, ether was his father. And becauseno one can live from earthly foods alone,there is this light-filled space, this warm be-ing providing constant, transparent, andsubtle food without which life would be im-possible. He almost makes us feel that theair, the ether, makes our spirit subtle and

transparent, thanks to this continuing giftof subtlety and transparency.

A Union Bearing Fruit

It is astonishing that even today the know-ledge people have of their environmentcontinues to be ignored if not scorned.

The myths of the Uwa of the Sierra Ne-vada del Cocuy and of the Koguis of theSierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which arenot ways of interpreting nature but ways ofliving within it with a deep sense of respon-sibility, recognize the wealth of meaningsof the natural world and celebrate complex

ceremonies of alliance and exchange. It is

crucial that they be taken into account to-

day when the attitude of industrial society,which is mindlessly utilitarian and profit-oriented, threatens to usher in the collapseof the natural world in so many regions.That is why we urgently need to ask how,despite the wisdom of the native peoplesall over the world, of their mythologiesand their wealth of knowledge acquiredby observation over the centuries, do wefind ourselves with an idea of developmentbased on imitation of acclaimed modelsand the subordination of some regions tothe priorities of others. Wallace Stevenswrote: A red garment from the Lhasa re-gion is an invisible element of the Llhasa

region made visible.Perhaps only the native peoples of

the different regions of the world can fullyunderstand these words, which speak withsubtlety of this deep reality which makestrees in one region become junks for sailing,and those of another into fans for coping

with the heat; which in one region causesthe making of certain liquors, and textilessomewhere else; which in short cause hu-man labor to be a dialogue with climates,with materials, and with the spirits of theplace. In any reflection on the relationshipbetween nature and culture, what must pri-marily be taken into account is this wisdom

accumulated by centuries of experience:the Eskimos to have twenty words for de-scribing whiteness, while the Tauregs em-ploy a like number to denote the shadesof sand in the heart of the Sahara. Arabshave set up a whole architecture to divinescarce and precious water, and shamans in

the Amazon have refined methods for dis-


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covering the healing powers of the plants,

so that in their orders of perception, plantsteach knowledge of plants. To see withthe loving eyes of familiarity, rather thaneyes eager for profits, is how to live in theworld; countless human beings are very of-ten pushed aside and driven away, becausethey are too slow for the trains of com-merce, too contemplative for the cycles ofindustry, too passive for the blind purveyorsof accumulation.

There one understands, more thananywhere else, the difference between dis-coverers and conquerors, the eternal dif-ficulty the conquerors of times past andthose of the present have in really seeing

the world of the Americas, in order to pro-ject its possibilities based on its true wealthand its true fragility, to better understandthe relations between nature and society inour complex mestizo world. Curiously, theapplication for decades of an urbanizingand industrializing development model,

perhaps full of good intentions but pro-foundly indifferent to what the communi-ties know of their surroundings and to thedelicate natural balances, has deepenedpoverty and dependence in many cornersof the world, and promoted deforestationand degradation of the environment.

An Example Not To Be Imitated

The material prosperity of some peopleshas created the illusion, consented to bythem and docilely accepted by others, thatthere is a single path to take to reach po-litical equilibrium, social peace, and mate-

rial prosperity, which is to blindly imitate

the prosperous countries, follow their mo-

dels, and try to adhere to the steps of theirdevelopment. Latin America is a perfectexample of a wealthy world, rich in termsof nature and culture, whose fundamentallimitation lies in the paradigms and objec-tives that it has adopted. By now everyonerealizes that excessive veneration for Europehas been not only our pride but also ourmisfortune. In Colombia, my own country,this veneration became so unhealthy thatMiguel Antonio Caro, the humanist andpoet who wrote the Constitution that gov-erned Colombia for a hundred years up un-til 1991, tried to speak only in Latin underthe flowering caper bushes of the savannah

of Bogot. He did not translate the wordsof Latin poets into modern languages likeother scholars, but the works of the poetsof modern languages into Latin. Howcould a man like that understand an equa-tor country, with rivers full of crocodilesand splendid forests whose exotic trees had

to be named with indigenous words ? Howcould the importance of the native peoplesand their cultures be understood by some-one who, even in the 19th century, contin-ued to think like the conquerors, that theindigenous communities were backwardand barbaric, and must be entrusted to thepious but destructive care of the church?

The 20th century, with its scientific dis-ciplines, its curiosity, its mental expansive-ness, and its esthetic daring, has very muchchanged how we look at ourselves. Since theSpanish conquest, we had learned to lookat our natural surroundings as an untamedand unyielding reality, lacking all those

beauties and virtues that ennoble the Euro-


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WILLIAM OSPINA

12

pean soil. Not even the revealing journey of

Baron von Humboldtwho went throughour countries seeing what everyone hadlooked at but nobody had seen, measuring,admiring, discovering or the journeysof the astonished 19th century travelers,or the flights into myth of Gauguin, Ste-venson and Rimbaud toward the promiseof paradise in virgin lands, helped us lookat our nature with less misgiving. We hadlearned to see the indigenous and Africancomponent as a constraint, and in govern-ment ministries racist theoreticians deve-loped pathetic theories about the blemishesof our mestizaje.

Yet, mestizaje was the key word for our

necessary rediscovery of America. Filledwith admiration for the social, industrial,and technical feats of the United States,Latin America frequently turned this greatnation into the unquestionable model tobe imitated in the pursuit of development,forgetting the vast differences between the

two cultures of the hemisphere. For if thereis one thing that did not take place here inthe United States, it was a mestizaje or amixing of the European with the nativeAmerican; nor was there any visible mix-ing of Anglo-Saxon and African blood toform a mulatto culture, Faulkners hap-less Joe Christmas notwithstanding. Here

the indigenous element was ignored in theprocess of institution building, and was leftsolely to the nostalgia of the scholars, tothe inspiration of poets like Longfellow, orto a suggestive paragraph in the novels ofSinclair Lewis. Rather, what happened wasa kind of sublimation of the indigenous

stance toward life in the worship of nature

that characterized the great 19th century

American poets, Emily Dickinson and WaltWhitman. In Whitmans veneration fornature and blithe mistrust of science andtechnology; in his naked personal religionand in his rather pagan adoration of thebody; in his cult of simple camaraderie andhis exaltation of the nomad life and aus-terity, Whitman speaks as though he werethe last Indian in North America. And theway the land was occupied here made itpossible from the outset to claim the uni-versal equality of free beings, basically im-migrants from Europe.

Our mestizaje seemed to take inqualityfor granted, when combined with the great

accumulation of wealth and privileges ofthose of European stock throughout colo-nial times, and those arrogant Creoles whosought to differentiate and distance them-selves from their fellow humans. It wasHumboldt himself who said that given thisentrenched colonial stratification, it would

be very diffi

cult for all of us in the south-ern nations of the Americas to one day seeourselves as fellow citizens. Bolivar spokeof the need to have paternal governmentsthat would be concerned about overco-ming the stratifications inherited from thecolonial age and seek basic equality beforethe law; that is the basis of democracy. But

all of that could be achieved only if we didnot lose sight of what is unique and specificabout our makeup, if we did not pretendto be like those peoples that do not havemixed blood, and are not weighed downby castes from colonial times. There isnothing more harmful than being blind to

nature when defining our priorities, and


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13

culpably neglecting to confront our own

challenges while vainly striving to imitatethe dynamism of other peoples. But for along time our development patterns werereduced to that very thing.

We became producers of gold andpearls, sugar and cattle, petroleum and ba-nanas, coffee and illegal drugs, governed bythe need to satisfy the metropolitan centers

rather than our own communities; we al-lowed more illustrious realities to map outour priorities; we put off the urgent task ofbuilding a community in solidarity, start-ing from our fragmented identities. Todaythe stratification of our peoples is still alar-ming, and governments prefer to assume

that this pyramid of privileges and ex-clusions is unchangeable; they even takeadvantage of it to define tax and law en-forcement strategies, not realizing that thisblindness to injustice is the leaven of dis-parity and the seed of social violence.

Globalization, a Dialoguebetween Traditions

Today there is endless talk of globalization,and that idea has engendered in manythe illusion of a global art, freed from thebonds of local traditions. Nevertheless, itshould be said that until now every culture

was local, that art has only been able tofind the universal in the local. How doesHomer manage to move people in all cul-tures of all ages by telling them stories ofthe wrath and cleverness of Bronze-AgeGreeks? His theme could not be more lo-cal, but there is no human being who does

not feel represented there. Don Quixotes

adventure over the fields of La Mancha is

local; likewise is Dantes journey throughHell, Purgatory, and Paradise, as he en-counters great figures from Florence andPistoia, and looks for a girl from his owntown. Marcel Prousts search for lost timeis also local; and even the novel that exaltsthe physical and mental labyrinths of thegreat modern metropolis, Joyces Ulysses, is

a journey in search of the universe throughtiny Dublin at the outset of the 20th cen-tury. What we have in common, despite allour diversity, is expressed more vigorouslyfrom a perspective situated in certain pre-cise landscapes, in certain customs, and inliving relationships with the world. And a

great cosmopolitan work, such as BorgesThe Aleph, is simply a dialogue of traditions,the convergences of all sources in a prismwhere they try to exist with no overlapand no transparency. Globalization can-not be understood as a rejection of tradi-tion, but as a dialogue between and fusion

of traditions: the dialogue between Afri-can musical traditions and Western instru-ments that characterized jazz at the outset;the dialogue of 19th century English paint-ers with the techniques of painters of theMiddle Ages, which was the Pre-Raphae-lite Brotherhood; the dialogue of Europe-an abstraction with African ceremonial art

that led to Cubism; the dialogue betweenFrench Surrealism, Russian Socialist ideas,and the American indigenous tradition thatproduced Mexican muralism.

We now know why the indigenouspeoples clung so stubbornly to their inter-pretation of nature as the source of life,

as a dwelling, as a sanctuary of thought,


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WILLIAM OSPINA

14

and as a stimulus to the imagination; we

now know why the heights of Europeanthought and sensitivity after the Enlighten-ment went back to invoking nature, with itswealth of meanings, as the source of all lu-cidity, and all survival. The disappearanceof nature in the discourse of theoreticiansand technicians is being overwhelminglyreplaced by the omnipresent discourse on

the environment and the planetary store-house of resources. But the philosophersknow that we will not survive if we do notreserve in nature a space for action, for de-sire, and a space for imagination. That isalso common knowledge among poets, ar-

tists, and the native peoples of all regions of

the world. Who knows how long it will takefor it to be discovered by industry which,as Estanislao Zuleta said, always shows thegreatest rationality in the details, and thegreatest irrationality in the whole. And howlong will it take for politicians to rememberthat the greatest moments of history werenot the result of seeking power for a few

groups, but rather the pursuit of happinessfor multitudes of human beings.


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15

William Ospina (Tolima, Colombia, 1954) is an essayist, poet, and translator. He studied

law and political science at the Universidad de Santiago in Cali, Colombia, and has workedin advertising and journalism. He has given lectures and readings of his work in major ci-ties around the world. He is the translator ofTres Cuentos [Three Short Stories] by GustaveFlaubert, and a founder of the literary reviewNmero. In 1992 he received the NationalLiterature Award granted by Colombian Institute of Culture for his book of poems El pasdel viento [The Country of the Wind], and in 2003 he won the Casa de las Amricas Awardin the essay category.

Photography: IDB Photo Library UnitTranslator: Larry Hanlon

Editor: Anne Vena

Designer: Andrea Leonelli


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Other publications in theEncuentros series:

Houses, Voices and Language in Latin AmericaDialogue with Jos Donoso, Chilean author ofHouse in the Country.No. 1, March 1993.

How the History of America BeganLecture by Germn Arciniegas, Colombian

historian, journalist and diplomat.No. 2, April 1993.

The International Year of Indigenous PeoplesLecture by Rigoberta Mench, Guatemalanindigenous leader and 1992 Nobel Peace Prizelaureate.No. 3, October 1993.

Contemporary Paraguayan Narrative: Two CurrentsLecture by Rene Ferrer, Paraguayan novelistand poet.No. 4, March 1994.

Paraguay and Its Plastic ArtsLecture by Annick Sanjurjo Casciero,

Paraguayan historian.No. 5, March 1994.

The Future of DramaLecture by Alfonso Sastre, Spanish playwright.No. 6, April 1994.

Dance: from Folk to Classical

Lecture by Edward Villella, North Americandancer and Artistic Director of the Miami CityBallet.No. 7, August 1994.

Belize: A Literary PerspectiveLecture by Zee Edgell, Belizean novelist andauthor ofBeka Lamb.No. 8, September 1994.

The Development of Sculpture in the Quito SchoolLecture by Magdalena Gallegos de Donoso,Ecuadorian anthropologist.No. 9, October 1994.

Art in Context: Aesthetics, Environment, and Functionin the Arts of JapanLecture by Ann Yonemura, North Americancurator of Japanese Art at the Freer andSackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution.No. 10, March 1995.

Approaching the End of the MillenniumLecture by Homero Aridjis, Mexican poetand winner of the United Nations Global 500

Award.No. 11, September 1995.

Haiti: A Bi-Cultural ExperienceLecture by Edwidge Danticat, Haitian novelistand author ofBreath, Eyes, Memory.No. 12, December 1995.

The Meanings of the MillenniumLecture by Bernard McGinn, North Americantheologian from the University of ChicagosDivinity School.No. 13, January 1996.

Andean Millenarian Movements: Their Origins,Originality and Achievements (16th-18th centuries).

Lecture by Manuel Burga, Peruvian sociologistfrom the Universidad Nacional Mayor de SanMarcos.No. 14, February 1996.


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Apocalypse in the Andes: Contact Zones and theStruggle for Interpretive PowerLecture by Mary Louise Pratt, Canadianlinguist from Stanford University.No. 15, March 1996.

When Strangers Come to Town: Millennial Discourse,Comparison, and the Return of Quetzalcoatl.Lecture by David Carrasco, North Americanhistorian from Princeton University.

No. 16, June 1996.

Understanding Messianism in Brazil: Notes from aSocial AnthropologistLecture by Roberto Da Matta, Braziliananthropologist from Notre Dame University.No. 17, September 1996.

The Peoples Millennium: The Legacy of Juan andEva PernLecture by Juan E. Corradi, Argentinesociologist from New York University.No. 18, November 1996.

Brief Notes on Ecuadorian and U.S. LiteratureLecture by Ral Prez Torres, Ecuadorian

Poet.No. 19, March 1997.

Society and Poetry: Those Who Come Wrapped in aBlanketLecture by Roberto Sosa, Honduran poet.No. 20, May 1997.

Architecture as a Living ProcessLecture by Douglas Cardinal, Canadianarchitect whose projects include Washington,D.C.s National Museum of the AmericanIndian.No. 21, July 1997.

Composing Opera: A Backstage Visit to the ComposersWorkshopLecture by Daniel Catn, Mexican composerwhose operas includeFlorencia en el Amazonas.No. 22, August 1997.

Welcoming Each Other: Cultural Transformation ofthe Caribbean in the 21st Century.Lecture by Earl Lovelace, Trinidadian novelistand winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Prize.

No. 23, January 1998.

Out of SilenceLecture by Albaluca Angel, Colombiannovelist and pioneer of Latin Americanpostmodernism.No. 24, April 1998.

How Latino Immigration Is Transforming AmericaLecture by Roberto Suro, North Americanreporter for The Washington Post, and formerBureau Chief ofThe New York Times inHouston, Texas.No. 25, May 1998.

The Iconography of Painted Ceramics from the

Northern AndesLecture by Felipe Crdenas-Arroyo,Colombian archaeologist from the Universityof Los Andes in Bogota.No. 26, July 1998.

Celebrating the Extraordinary Life of Elisabeth SamsonLecture by Cynthia McLeod, Surinamese

novelist and author of The High Price of Sugar.No. 27, August 1998.

A Country, A DecadeLecture by Salvador Garmendia, Venezuelannovelist, and winner of the Juan Rulfo ShortStory Prize and the National Literature Prize.No. 28, September 1998.


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Aspects of Creation in the Central American NovelLecture by Gloria Guardia, Panamanian writerand essayist, and member of the PanamanianAcademy of Language.No. 29, September 1998.

Made in GuyanaLecture by Fred DAguiar, Guyanese novelistand winner of the Whitbread First NovelAward, and the Guyana Prize for Fiction, and

Poetry.No. 30, November 1998.

True Lies on the Subject of Literary CreationLecture by Sergio Ramrez, Nicaraguan authorofMargarita, Est Linda La Mar, and formerVice-President of his country.No. 31, May 1999.

Myth, History and Fiction in Latin AmericaLecture by Toms Eloy Martnez, Argentinewriter and author of Santa Evita.No. 32, May 1999.

Cultural Foundations of Latin American IntegrationLecture by Leopoldo Castedo, Spanish-Chilean

art historian.No. 33, September 1999.

El Salvador and the Construction of Cultural IdentityLecture by Miguel Huezo Mixco, Salvadorianpoet and journalist.No. 34, October 1999.

The Female Memory in NarrativeLecture by Nlida Pion, Brazilian novelist andauthor of The Republic of Dreams.No. 35, November 1999.

Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of AstorPiazzolla

Lecture by Mara Susana Azzi, Argentineanthropologist, and board member of theNational Academy of Tango in Buenos Aires.No. 36, May 2000.

Columbuss Ghost: Tourism, Art and National Identityin the BahamasLecture by Ian Gregory Strachan, English

Professor at the University of Massachusetts atDartmouth, and author of Gods Angry Babies.No. 37, June 2000.

Talkin Ol Story: A Brief Survey of the Oral Traditionof the BahamasLecture by Patricia Glinton Meicholas,founding president of the Bahamas Association

for Cultural Studies, and recipient of a SilverJubilee of Independence Medal for Literature.No. 38, July 2000.

Anonymous Sources: A Talk on Translators andTranslationLecture by Eliot Weinberger, essayist andtranslator of Octavio Paz, winner of the PEN/

Kolovakos Award for promoting Hispanicliterature in the United States.No. 39, November 2000.

Bringing the Rainbow into the House: Multiculturalismin CanadaLecture by Roch Carrier, Director of theCanada Council for the Arts (1994-97), andCanadas fourth National Librarian.No. 40, February 2001.


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The Light at the Edge of the WorldLecture by Wade Davis, Explorer-in-Residenceat the National Geographic Society, and authorof The Serpent and the Rainbow and One River.No. 41, March 2001.

Chestnut Women: French Caribbean Women Writersand SingersLecture by Brenda F. Berrian, Professor at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, author ofThats the

Way It Is: African American Women in the New SouthAfrica.No. 42, July 2001.

Cultural Capital and its Impact on DevelopmentLecture by Colombian sociologist CamiloHerrera, founding director of the Center forCultural Studies for Political, Economic and

Social Development in Bogota.No. 43a, October 2001.

Modernization, Cultural Change and the Persistence ofTraditional ValuesFrom the article by Ronald Inglehart, Professorof Political Science and Program Directorat the Institute for Social Research at the

University of Michigan; and Wayne E. Baker,Faculty Associate at the Institute for SocialResearch.No. 43b, February 2002.

Culture Industries and the Development Crisis in LatinAmericaLecture by Nstor Garca Canclini,distinguished Argentine philosopher andanthropologist, recipient of the Casa delas Amricas Prize (1981), and director ofthe Urban Culture Studies program at theUNAM, Iztapalapa, Mexico.No. 43c, April 2002.

DowntownParadise: Reflections on Identity in CentralAmericaLecture by Honduran novelist Julio Escoto,recipient of the National Literary Prize (1974),Spains Gabriel Mir Prize (1983); and the JosCecilio del Valle Prize in Honduras (1990).No. 44, January 2002.

Art and New Media in ItalyLecture by Dr. Maria Grazia Mattei,with remarks by artist Fabrizio Plessi. Dr.Mattei is an expert in new communicationstechnology and founder of the MGM DigitalCommunication, a research and developmentstudio specialized in digital culture in Milan.No. 45, February 2002.

A Sense for Public Space: Architecture in a Time ofCompulsive ConsumptionLecture by the Uruguayan architect RafaelVioly, finalist in the new World Trade Centerdesign competition and designer of the newexpansion of the John F. Kennedy Center forthe Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

No. 46, May 2003.


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Spanish and English versions available.

TheEncuentros series is distributed free of charge to university and municipal librariesthroughout the IDB member countries. Interested institutions may obtain the series by

contacting the IDB Cultural Center at the address listed on the back cover.

Crafts and Commodities: Oaxacan Wood CarvingsLecture by Dr. Michael Chibnik, Professor ofAnthropology at the University of Iowa, basedon his book Crafting Tradition: The Making andMarketing of Oaxacan Wood Carving, University ofTexas Press, 2002.No. 47, May 2003.

Education and Citizenship in the Global EraLecture by Fernando Savater, Spanish

philosopher and novelist, Professor ofPhilosophy at the Universidad Complutense deMadrid.No. 48, October 2003.

Cultural Ecology in the AmericasLecture by Dr. Cristin Samper, Director ofthe National Museum of Natural History at

the Smithsonian Institution, and former chiefscience adviser to the Colombian Ministry ofthe Environment.No. 49, December 2003.

The Essential Role of Ethics in the Development ofLatin AmericaLecture by Salomn Lerner, Professor of

Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic Universityof Peru and has served as Rector of thatUniversity. In 2003, he received the AngelEscobar Jurado National Human RightsAward.No. 50a, April 2004.

Convictions That Sabotage ProgressLecture by Marcos Aguinis, former Ministerof Culture in Argentina, who created theNational Program for the Democratizationof Culture. Aguinis was awarded the PlanetaPrize in Spain, the Grand Prize of Honor bythe Argentine Society of Writers.No. 50b, June 2004.

The Difficulty of Telling the Truth

Lecture by Daro Ruiz Gmez, art andliterary critic. He has also publishedcollections of short stories, poetry and anovel,Hojas en el patio.No. 50c, October 2004.

Hlderlin and the Uwa: A Reflection on Nature,Culture and Development

Lecture by William Ospina, essayist, poet, andtranslator. In 1992 he received the NationalLiterature Award granted by ColombianInstitute of Culture, and in 2003 he won theCasa de las Amricas Award.No. 51, July 2004.


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holderlin and the u'wa

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