Spectral Scars of the Violent Pasts

In the book When Forests Run Amok, author Daniel Ruiz-Serna skillfully weaves narratives that depict the scars inflicted by violent exchange between guerrilla and paramilitary forces within the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian territories of Bajo Atrato. The bullet wounds on tree trunks, which are healed and marked by calluses to form scars, bear profound significance, encapsulating the complex interplay of cosmo-ecological interconnections reverberating throughout the forest. These scars move beyond the intricate political and cultural differences among the human inhabitants residing around the Atrato River, permeating into the realm of nonhuman entities within the forests. Within these postwar forests, an array of spectral entities emerges, causing the forests to run amok: unseen creatures inhabit the obstructed flow of rivers, untamed spirits elude the grasp of shamans, jaguars develop a sinister appetite for human flesh, and the ethereal spirits of fallen soldiers wander aimlessly. Are the forests indeed running amok, or do they represent a novel state of our existence characterized by unstable ecological terrains?The core theoretical framework of Ruiz-Serna's book is the exploration of the concept of territory, viewed from two distinct ontological perspectives: substantial and living. The substantial territory is conceptualized as a material or physical space, often referred to as land, where natural resources are present and culturally appropriated. This territory is a substance that is inhabited by a specific community, acquiring social significance through the process of harnessing its natural resources for communal use. Such interpretation echoes sentiments expressed by the Colombian Supreme Court when it granted Indigenous communities historical rights to territory based on their identity, a perspective also adopted by various ethnic groups asserting territorial claims. Moreover, even extractive enterprises, including private timber companies operating within the forest, embrace similar substantial views of the territory. Nevertheless, the author develops a new perspective on the living territory, characterized as a realm that is "enacted and experienced rather than provided, and it emerges as such by virtue of people's practices, while those practices are in turn affected by the territory itself" (17). Instead of viewing territory as static, this conception regards it as emergent, hybrid, and relational, emphasizing the intricate entanglements between humans and other than humans.The bugs that feed on decaying trees result in the formation of palizadas, which obstruct the flow of rivers, causing floods and impeding human movement. This environment fosters new habitats for various aquatic beings, such as sierpe snakes, and quícharos and pelmás stingrays, in turn generating unfamiliar patterns of human interaction. It facilitates the emergence of creatures like fieras, which are described as "colossal and extraordinary beings" (31). These beings are not always discernible from other riverine features and move beyond the "simple relationship whereby the river provides the setting for fieras to exist" (80). Instead, the rivers "participate in these fieras' coming to being," enabling affective and emergent qualities, which "do not uniquely belong to the river because these bodies of water cannot bring fieras about by themselves," but are created through entanglements between the river and the "perceiving subjects" (80, 82). These entanglements with humans are in a constant state of becoming, establishing a shared ontological realm where the living and the dead coexist, offering expansive narratives of the interplay between resettled Indigenous people and the spirits of soldiers who perished in the war.The book delves further into the relationships that humans share with jaguars in postwar Bajo Atrato. The jaguar is not perceived as a singular, cohesive entity that roams the forests. Instead, it is viewed as a hybrid object, existing as "a jaguar and a half, or a half of a jaguar" (205). When perceived as "more than one," the jaguar is seen as a token with a certain type and accorded a "world-making power because each one demands different kinds of obligations, values, attachments, and rules of engagement from its practitioners" (189). It is regarded as "a being exceeding the drives of his own condition," whose interpretation varies among different stakeholders (208). The environmentalists consider it an endangered species, the military perceives it as a wild adversary, the local communities see it as a tigre to be avoided, and the politicians strive to protect livelihoods from it without violating natural resource laws. On the other hand, the jaguar becomes "less than many" when perceived as a man-eating jaguar. The reason for its activity is attributed to its entanglements with humans, including the environmental change and its proximity to the military as a weapon during the war. It is viewed as "a being halfway away from his own jaguarness," perverted by the activities of the civil war (208). By complicating the figure of the jaguar, the author introduces us to an animal that is relational to its surroundings and constantly negotiating within its living territory.Ruiz-Serna adeptly circumvents the clutches of the modernist trap, an invention that bifurcates nature and culture, as expounded on by scholars like Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, to construct a nonmodern cosmology of Bajo Atrato. Positioned within the realm of contemporary cultural politics, this book serves as an innovative ethnographic account that critically engages with the burgeoning ecological and ontological turn within the field of anthropology. Its narrative not only enhances our comprehension of the violence inflicted on Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities but also facilitates a nuanced understanding of the territory as a victim of armed conflict. The objective of this book is to present an account of the aftermath of a violent civil war and the narratives that emerge from the scars it leaves behind. By prioritizing the analysis of cosmo-ecological networks, the book effectively achieves its objective, casting illumination on the pivotal role played by nonhuman entities in the formation of a living territory. However, this endeavor merely represents the incipient exploration of relational existence on unstable terrains. It is not that the forests have run amok, instead, amok can be redefined as the new standard state of existence. This realization calls for the incorporation of ontological and speculative methods into the broader purview of anthropological investigations, in process complicating the contours of territorial existence.