“It’s That Everything Is Alive Simultaneously.” Memory and Forgiveness as Reharmonization of the Territory Among the Peoples That Make up the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, Colombia

This article exposes the relationship between the narratives of memory and forgiveness within the indigenous movement in the department of Cauca (Colombia) along with the construction of their identity as subjects affected by violence. The article stems from multilocal fieldwork conducted with members of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), indigenous Nasa and Coconuco authorities and elders, and collaborators from the department’s indigenous movement. The text concludes that indigenous memory is influenced by recursive structures of time and space, where past events are still occurring in the present, as the violated subjects, especially the ancestors and the territory, remain in the here and now. This configures an ecological approach to political ontology, prompting a redefinition of the web of social interactions entangled in the genesis of armed violence, and the kinds of rituals geared towards forgiveness for the harms and violence inflicted by the armed conflict. The novelty of the article lies in its assessment of the notions of memory and forgiveness within the indigenous community of Cauca, represented by the CRIC, as a bearer of a non-anthropocentric ethical proposition to address the effects of violence from the normative perspective of reharmonization.