HARVESTING THE BITTER JUICE CONTRADICTIONS OF PAEZ RESISTANCE IN THE CHANGING COLOMBIAN NATION-STATE

Indigenous ethnic identity among the Paez has been shaped by changing strategies of resistance to the political and economic domination and cultural hegemony of the Colombian nation-state. This resistance has h istorically sustained a territorial and cultural entity, Nasa Kiwe (Pa ez Nation), that has incorporated both counterhegemonic displacement o f the nation-state and a pervasive accession to hegemonic forms and in stitutions. My collaboration in agricultural experiments in the Paez v illage of Pitayo constituted an attempt to advocate for Paez cultural and territorial rights as well as to challenge anthropology's complici t relationship with nation-building. However, the attempt reproduced t he contradictions between resistance and the project of nation-buildin g recurrent in Latin American history.