Colonialism, Landscape, and Interethnic Systems in the North-Eastern Orinoco River Basin during Colonial Times

Between the 16^thand 18^thcenturies, the transition between the north-eastern Orinoco River and the south-eastern Caribbean basin was the setting of a number of colonial projects, which main focus was on the environmental modification. From the 17^thcentury onwards, Encomiendasand mission projects were modelled on the ideal of the “civilised” social space, where the new logic of production, based on the notion of the unlimited extraction of natural resources, was accompanied by projects of religious indoctrination.Since the missionary model was based on the European ideal of the separation between “civilized” social spaces and “wild” landscapes, they were configured according to the imagines of “healthy” and “ill” environments. By contrast, Indigenous populations had a de-centralized political organization and were connected by a set of interethnic systems articulated within wider networks in regions where direct colonial control was not possible. These networks were structured by political confederations antagonistic with Spanish colonial rule, including both other Indigenous interethnic systems and other European colonies, such as the Lesser Antilles French and the Esequibo River's Dutch.

This presentation aims to highlight the overlaps, contradictions, and mixtures between the set spatial, environmental, political and economical conceptions imposed by colonial projects and Indigenous responses, within north-eastern Orinoco’s missionary projects between the 17^thand the 18^thcenturies. First, the impact of the Spanish sense of the civilised and productive social spaces on the Indigenous sense of landscapes will be approached by analyzing the creation of culturally hybrid landscapes. Second, political relations around these overlapping perceptions of nature will be highlighted by illustrating the interethnic relations new landscapes. Finally, Indigenous responses to ecological and political impositions will be illustrated by means of the reconstruction of the interethnic systems’ historical retraining as a way of cultural and physical survival, as well as a means of constructing identities.