From Colonial Encounter to Decolonizing Encounters. Culture and Nature Seen from the Andean Cosmovision of Ever: The Nurturance of Life as Whole

From the perspective of the Andean cosmovision of ever,1 culture and nature are not separate. At the core of this cosmovision is the nurturing of life as a whole. Such nurturing takes place within the local pacha (meaning the living, natural collectivity of all beings) and comprises the runas (humans), sallqa (nature) and apus/huacas (deities). Learning how to nurture and letting oneself be nurtured are primordial principles and practices in the Andes. Nurturance is carried out through the treatment of all entities as equivalent beings, with respect, empathy, reciprocity and joy. All living beings are considered equivalent persons that complement one another through acts of mutual nurture, manifested in rituals and daily dialogue. Through formal and informal dialogue, Andean indigenous2 peasants have developed sophisticated responses to the variety of beings inhabiting a particular agricultural place or chacra,3 the small plot of land at the centre of everyday practices and rituality. Chacra represents not only the place but also the relations sustaining all equivalent persons (such as the seed, the llama, the rain, the rock) in mutual relations of harmony that procure life continually. The chacra is harboured within pacha, the landscape that Andean indigenous peoples have become intimate with, the landscape that they have come to know in all its expressions over time. Through ritual, the Andean worldview purports to sustain the creation and recreationof diversity in all of its expressions and practices. The contemporary concept of sustainability is intrinsic to this millenary worldview; the Andean cosmovision is devoted to the procurement of balance and harmony among all living beings demonstrated both in daily and ritual practices (IUCN, 1997; Posey, 1999). This unique approach to life was rarely understood by the colonizer mentality and its dominant Euro4-American centred view of the world that has dominated for the last 500 years, thus marginalizing and threatening the Andean way of life (Grillo, 1998b).