Aesthetic experiences and memory in traditional Murui-Muina dances in Leticia-Amazonas

Abstract

This paper is the result of collaborative work with the Murui-Muina people living in the city of Leticia, in the Colombian Amazon, on the border with Brazil and Peru. The study focuses on traditional dances and celebrations that take place at different times of the year and form part of a complex network of exchanges. The text historically situates the processes that led the Murui-Muina to move from their traditional territories to the city of Leticia, beginning with the rubber economy in the early twentieth century, as well as the traces of this phenomenon in the memory of this people. It analyzes the ways in which processes of displacement and adaptation shape new relationships with culture and its forms of expression. Drawing on the image of baskets and malocas as aesthetic and material elements of Murui-Muina culture, it analyzes their uses in relation to processes of memory construction connected to dances and agricultural life. In the second part, the text explores the possibilities of thinking about aesthetic experiences through native concepts and the potential of ethnographic work attentive to everyday life for understanding processes of long duration. Finally, it concludes that it is through such native categories that we can approach aesthetic experiences that challenge notions of corporeality and performativity in this context and that are essential for understanding memory and aesthetics when working alongside Indigenous peoples.