Hermosa Mariposa

Abstract

Before the arrival of European colonizers, the borders between peoples and ethnic groups were tenuous. A succession of territorial demarcations occurred from their arrival, at the cost of the lives of thousands of Indigenous peoples. With each new border drawn, more mechanisms of control and separation were imposed. Many peoples were divided between one country and another, and even within the same country. These Indigenous peoples have managed to survive and resist to this day, with relatives on both sides who continue to move across these borders.

They carried their tragic banners soaked in blood and went to the ends of the earth, to Patagonia. It must be understood that the only limits we find in nature are the absurd limits imposed by humans, with their fences, walls, laws, and rules; their properties that isolated our lives from the true meaning of nature. But even between one border and another, or even within a wall, there will always be a last empty space, a fracture that will always reveal the falsity of contours and concepts.

It is these false contours of power representation that must be constantly questioned; the representations of maps. All false beginnings and endings. Power is, above all, representation. The representation of a new imaginary must begin with an act of erasure to reclaim “buen vivir.” This is what maps have done since our earliest childhood: when we looked at them, copied them, and memorized them, tracing each country, we unconsciously reinforced these physical obstacles. They suppressed the continuity of life and the world, segmented it into political and biblical fragments; evoked their white heroes and territories, drew places, nailed crosses; and, at the same time, blinded us to any possibility of perceiving the spectacle of nature’s continuity.

Latin America and the Caribbean, as a formal analogy to a butterfly, symbolize the spirit of metamorphosis, transformation, polymerization, and the fertilization of the world.