Territorio e identidad en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia)

Abstract

The article addresses the logics of human occupation of a singular territory: The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia). Between the 16th and the 21st centuries, migrations were attracted by an idealized conception of the Sierra Nevada due to the specific ignorance that Colombian society had about it. These migrations, initially carried out by settlers, become more complex, when from the second half of the 20th century to today, divergent interests coincide in that geographical space, causing tensions that later turn into violent conflicts. The social forms of production of each social group immersed in this geographical space shaped an interpretation of geography and the landscape is the element that constitutes content of the ethical and aesthetic conception of them and their relationship with the environment. The development of the practice of tourism in its type of nature tourism became a strategy that tried to reorder the territory from a return to legality and governance, but its underlying intentionality turned out to be as disturbing as the conflict itself. In this state of affairs, the identity of a territory transcends the bets of economic order and inserts itself in a much deeper way in the ethos that forces us to carry out an exercise of deeper understanding.