Publicación:

Etnografía del productor araucano de la sabana inundable, Colombia.

Resumen

The objective of this article was to describe the ethnography of the inhabitants of Arauca, Cravo Norte, and Puerto Rondón municipalities, located in the flooded savannahs of the Department of Arauca, Colombia, from a systemic approach of the different ecosystems present in them, the prevalent ways of life and the relationship with nature using qualitative research subjectivity and intersubjectivity criteria and open-end semi-structured interviews through a “dialogue of knowledges” with 30 producers, ten per municipality. We selected 11 subjects that are a central part of the “llanero” everyday life and allow for the existence of these producers in an attempt to listen to their voices and in the hope to build concrete proposals arising from the feelings of this “amphibious llanero”. The interviewees were categorized according to the size of their land and their livestock inventory as follows: big producers (more than 1,000 heads of cattle), medium producers (500 to 1,000 heads of cattle), and small producers (less than 500 heads of cattle). We analyzed the information obtained using subjectivity and intersubjectivity criteria and from there, we established the results: 70 % of the interviewees were direct heirs of their lands, many of them, founders. Only 30% of the total area corresponded to leveled land and the rest to low lands. The predominates cattle breed is zebu, but the native creole breeds are now more visible; 53.3% of the interviewees milked cows and produced artisanal cheese. The natural economy of the traditional farms in Arauca and Cravo Norte contrasted with the transformations occurred in the agro-ecosystems of Puerto Rondón municipality, which is closer to the dynamic piedmont areas.