La imagen como makruma (don): fotografía etnográfica entre los arhuacos de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

This article is a case study of the exchanges and relationships that arose from the circulation of images in the Arhuaco community of Kutunzama in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The circulation of photographs, which show the present and past history of the Arhuaco people, led to an exchange between the mamos, the community and myself —as ethnographer—. The purpose of this text is to show how the circulation of these photographs can be understood as a gift in a process of redistribution based on the evocative, material and sensual capacities of the images. This article consists of an ethnographic approach, developed between 2017 and 2019, on the basis which the community’s forms of organization and kinship are understood via the elicitation of photographs and films, interviews and participant observation. This circulation also made it possible to activate narratives of the recent history of the village, related to the settlement and the context of territorial disputes in the area. Ethnographic photography allowed us to approach notions of time and space, and to broaden the Arhuaco notion of makruma. Rather than conceiving of this notion as a gift, it is understood as a process of redistribution in which the given object possesses the characteristics of the person who gives it and the return of the object (in this case the images) becomes a way of settling a spiritual debt. The text shows the image as a means of interaction, a means of encounter, a place of circulation and sensory experience. It approaches the image as a multisensory object and the photograph not only as a representational object, but also as one that traces social relations based on the indigenous notion of makruma.