ABSTRACT
Several years ago I took part in a utopic experience inspired by the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. This massif, insulated from the Andes, hosts almost the entire spectrum of tropical American ecosystems, as well as a great number of endemic species. By the time of the Conquest, the Sierra was inhabited by a sizeable population that built settlements upon an astounding stone infrastructure. This society, known as the Tairona, is considered along with the Muisca to be one of the great precolonial civilizations in Colombia. Today, four indigenous groups, descendants of these builders of stone, inhabit the highlands of the Sierra. By virtue of the intriguing world of esoteric knowledge with which “the magic of ethnography” (Malinowski 1961) has endowed them, the peoples of Sierra Nevada appear as the “guardians of the world” (Davis 2004: 38) whose “voices of ancient wisdom rise to save the planet from pollution” (Perera 1998: M2).
